Dr. Giggles House of Pain serves up more than just screams, they also serve food, in the form of donations to the Chestermere Regional Food Bank.
With Halloween over and the haunted house taken down, all that was left for Dr. Giggles, better known as Mike Koroll, was to tally up the donations and deliver them to the food bank.
All told, 747 Kilograms of food and $1,102.56 was donated to the food bank. Executive Director of the Chestermere Regional Food Bank, Mardi Oel, said that this is enough food to feed 15 families for one month.
“This is fabulous,” said Oel.
“With Christmas coming up, and Christmas with Dignity and our Christmas hampers, we should be good till well after Christmas with this kind of donation,” she said.
Oel said that the need in Chestermere has been fluctuating lately but it is starting to creep up again.
Along with the sheer amount of donation, Oel thinks it should last them into the new year, these kinds of food drives also tend to collect less common but still needed donations such as paper towel and Kleenex.
Every year, Oel is blown away by the dedication and work the Koroll and his neighbours put into the haunted house and their efforts to give back to the food bank.
“I can’t believe how much work went into this,” she said.
Oel was one of the approximately 600 people who went through the haunted house on Halloween night.
In total about 1500 people visited the haunted house this year, up about 300 from last year.
Attendees weren’t the only thing that went up this year, there was an increase in donations of both food items and cash this year.
“I was absolutely amazed at the work that went into that,” said Oel.
She admits to having been scared a couple times as she went through the house.
“A couple of those guys scared me,” she laughed.
Koroll is happy to hear that since he worked hard to make it scary this year after hearing some comments that last year’s haunted house wasn’t as frightening.
“I was just pleased to hear that everyone thought it was absolutely terrifying,” he said.
“It was amazing, just awesome,” said Oel.
Koroll is proud of what he and his neighbours have been able to do with the annual haunted house.
Koroll’s wife, Siobhan, said that the payoff for all the work is knowing that someone won’t go hungry because of them.
